Anna Karenina eBook

“And I!” she said. “Even when....”
She stopped and went on again, looking at him resolutely
with her truthful eyes, “Even when I thrust
from me my happiness. I always loved you alone,
but I was carried away. I ought to tell you....
Can you forgive that?”

“Perhaps it was for the best. You will
have to forgive me so much. I ought to tell
you...”

This was one of the things he had meant to speak about.
He had resolved from the first to tell her two things—­that
he was not chaste as she was, and that he was not
a believer. It was agonizing, but he considered
he ought to tell her both these facts.

“No, not now, later!” he said.

“Very well, later, but you must certainly tell
me. I’m not afraid of anything.
I want to know everything. Now it is settled.”

He added: “Settled that you’ll take
me whatever I may be—­you won’t give
me up? Yes?”

“Yes, yes.”

Their conversation was interrupted by Mademoiselle
Linon, who with an affected but tender smile came
to congratulate her favorite pupil. Before she
had gone, the servants came in with their congratulations.
Then relations arrived, and there began that state
of blissful absurdity from which Levin did not emerge
till the day after his wedding. Levin was in
a continual state of awkwardness and discomfort, but
the intensity of his happiness went on all the while
increasing. He felt continually that a great
deal was being expected of him—­what, he
did not know; and he did everything he was told, and
it all gave him happiness. He had thought his
engagement would have nothing about it like others,
that the ordinary conditions of engaged couples would
spoil his special happiness; but it ended in his doing
exactly as other people did, and his happiness being
only increased thereby and becoming more and more
special, more and more unlike anything that had ever
happened.

“Now we shall have sweetmeats to eat,”
said Mademoiselle Linon—­ and Levin drove
off to buy sweetmeats.

“Well, I’m very glad,” said Sviazhsky.
“I advise you to get the bouquets from Fomin’s.”

“Oh, are they wanted?” And he drove to
Fomin’s.

His brother offered to lend him money, as he would
have so many expenses, presents to give....

“Oh, are presents wanted?” And he galloped
to Foulde’s.

And at the confectioner’s, and at Fomin’s,
and at Foulde’s he saw that he was expected;
that they were pleased to see him, and prided themselves
on his happiness, just as every one whom he had to
do with during those days. What was extraordinary
was that everyone not only liked him, but even people
previously unsympathetic, cold, and callous, were
enthusiastic over him, gave way to him in everything,
treated his feeling with tenderness and delicacy,
and shared his conviction that he was the happiest
man in the world because his betrothed was beyond
perfection. Kitty too felt the same thing.
When Countess Nordston ventured to hint that she
had hoped for something better, Kitty was so angry
and proved so conclusively that nothing in the world
could be better than Levin, that Countess Nordston
had to admit it, and in Kitty’s presence never
met Levin without a smile of ecstatic admiration.